Hospitality terry cloth bathroom items, such as wash cloths, hand towels, bath mats and bath towels, are frequently made of 100% cotton for absorbency and feel. However, cotton terry cloth is inherently weak, which makes the outer edges (selvage and hemmed) prone to premature failure. This failure may be due to poor construction and/or the weak characteristics of the cotton fibers.
Due to the high failure rate of the cotton terry cloth products, using 100% cotton terry cloth items in the hospitality industry creates a budgetary burden that is hard to overcome since damaged or defective towels cannot be placed in a guest room. Continued replacement of terry cloth bathroom items is expensive and wasteful. Many hotels, in order to keep their expenses in check, do not purchase sufficient inventory to service their hotels. As a result, terry items are laundered and rotated at least four times per week. Given the useful life of a terry cloth towel as an example at 50 use and laundering cycles, the calculated life of a towel is 12.5 weeks before the item needs replacing.
There is substantial expense in replacing such towels, especially for the higher quality towels, which typically provide even shorter life span. A premium quality bath towel, normally used to exhibit value to hotel customers, can cost anywhere from around US$5.00 each up to US$7.00 each. The average hotel will normally get between 20 and 25 uses out of such a premium bath towel (the most expensive piece in the bathroom ensemble). More often than not the towel has plenty of life remaining in the body, but its edges fail because of inadequate structural construction in the selvage edges or top and bottom hems. This failure can also occur in the sewn upper and lower hems.
Part of the reason for these failures is the construction technique used by the weaving mills when constructing these products. Spun cotton yarns are used almost exclusively throughout a towel used in the hospitality industry; fine combed and carded cotton, when twisted together, make a quasi-durable component in the towel manufacturing process but a single yarn can be chaffed, and broken through multiple uses. When this happens all of the remaining yarns used in the process are prone to failure as well.
Over the years some manufacturers have blended cotton with polyester in ratios of 86% cotton/14% polyester in an effort to make the terry cloth items stronger and more durable. However, many corporate hotels have resisted buying these types of towels thinking that any terry product that has any polyester in the composition would be less appealing than their 100% cotton counterparts.